General questions Afghan timeline

Marine Gen. Joe Dunford on Thursday questioned President Barack Obama’s decision to announce the date by which U.S. troops will pull out of Afghanistan, telling senators he had hoped the call would be based on conditions on the ground, not on a schedule.

“I think all of us in uniform, including the Afghans, would have preferred for that to be a bit more ambiguous,” Dunford told the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing to be the new commandant of the Marine Corps.

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Republicans took a much stronger tone.

“It is a complete, absolute disaster in the making,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

“‘You are abandoning us,’ that’s what they told me and Sen. Graham,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Afghan commanders had told him on a recent visit. “The fact is, we need a conditions-based decision. Right now, we are not confident the Afghans can take up the complete burden for their own security.”

Dunford didn’t disagree.

“There’s no doubt that the Afghan forces of today are not capable of conducting the operations we’re conducting today … not if you project forward the threat as it exists today,” he said.

Committee members in both parties worried that as the American endgame approaches in Afghanistan, the U.S. could repeat what they called the mistakes that led to the crisis in Iraq, where a sectarian government and an incompetent military lost large sections of the country to extremist fighters.

Americans want the war to be over, but Washington must not leave Afghanistan vulnerable to insurgents or terrorists, they said.

“I implore you, and I charge you, with speaking truth to power,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). “If it looks like … we’re not getting it right, as we didn’t get it right in Iraq, I hope you will come back to us and tell us we’re not getting it right. We need to know that. We didn’t get the right advice and we got surprised in Iraq.”

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) asked Dunford in plain terms what he and his successor, Army Gen. John Campbell, can do to keep Afghanistan from becoming another Iraq.

There a few important differences, Dunford said. Afghan political leaders want the U.S. to stay, he said, where Iraqi politicians did not. Afghanistan will likely undergo an orderly transition of government this year, pending the outcome of the ongoing election audit, giving legitimacy to the new administration in Kabul.

Dunford acknowledged, however, that the Afghan National Security Forces will continue to need help with sustainment, logistics, paying troops and other jobs with which the U.S. now helps or which it provides. That’s why American troops must remain past the end of the year, Dunford argued, and he appeared to agree that the pace of their subsequent withdrawal should depend on how well the Afghans are controlling security, not on a schedule.

Obama’s plan would call for reducing the 9,800 American troops that would stay in Afghanistan until Jan. 1 by about half over 2015, then leaving only a presence in Kabul by 2016. Dunford told Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) that the White House and the Pentagon would have to begin deciding about a year from now whether to change course, because the outlying bases that U.S. troops use now would be mostly closed by September and October of next year.

Despite the many questions on the future of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Dunford appears likely to be quickly confirmed as commandant by the Senate. He told senators that he appreciates that he’s heading into a difficult era for the Marines, especially with next year’s likely return of sequestration. The next commandant, Dunford said, will face unpleasant decisions pitting the Marines’ personnel budget against its programs and readiness, among others.

“Balancing all of those in a fiscally constrained environment is going to be very difficult,” he said. “I know Gen. [James] Amos has prioritized readiness, but he’s been forced to make decisions that create challenges in the future for modernization, Balancing those things over the next couple of years is going to be difficult.”